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Ethnicity in Lowell

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Ethnicity in Lowell Lowell National Historical Park covers:Olmstead Cover Template 03-04-04.qxd 3/1/2011 10:28 AM Page 1 National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Ethnography Program Northeast Region ETHNICITY IN LOWELL LOWELL NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK ETHNOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW AND ASSESSMENT ETHNICITY IN LOW ell Robert Forrant, Ph.D. and Christoph Strobel, Ph.D. Lowell National Historical Park Ethnographic Overview and Assessment Prepared under contract with University of Massachusetts Lowell History Department Northeast Region Ethnography Program National Park Service Boston, MA March 2011 Cover Photo: The spire of St. Patrick’s Church and the golden dome of the Holy Trinity Hellenic Orthodox Church in the Acre section of Lowell, Massachusetts. (Richard Howe Jr., 2009) i EX E CUTIV E SUMMARY This Ethnography Project, sponsored by Lowell National Historical Park, examines the history of immigration and ethnicity in Lowell, the prototype factory town developed in the 1820s and one of the most diverse cities in the United States today. Utilizing archival sources, including numerous interviews, a corpus of new oral histories that we’ve collected, neighborhood and building histories, and ethno-historical and ethnographic methodologies, we examined the city’s past and its contemporary cultural geography. Our study begins with the early colonial contact between Native Americans and Europeans in the seventeenth century and traces the history to the present day. We examine how European colonial expansion influenced the Native peoples in the region from the sixteenth century onwards. Early European colonization brought trade and disease and eventually undermined the presence of sovereign Native villages in the region. By the seventeenth century, the expansion of the British colony of Massachusetts also led to the establishment and entrenchment of colonial British settlements like Chelmsford. In the nineteenth century the global industrial revolution and immigration brought significant change to the region. The landscape where the Concord and Merrimack Rivers joined was slowly transformed by the emergence of manufactories, mills, and canals. Early industrial producers recruited Yankee women to work in their textile mills. But at the same time a growing presence of immigrant laborers from Ireland and other parts of Europe settled in the region. Male and female immigrant workers, who remained the major source of labor until the 1920s, soon replaced the daughters of Yankee yeomen farmers in the mills. The federal Immigration Act of 1924 dramatically undermined the entry of new immigrants to the United States. The law’s quota system made it particularly hard for immigrants from eastern and southern Europe and the non-western world to enter the country. Furthermore, the gradual decline of the textile industry and the corresponding loss of mill employment made Lowell a less attractive destination for those immigrants still able to enter the United States. Following the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the national origin quotas, a renewed stream of global migrants has entered the United States and many of these individuals and families have found their way to Lowell. i Executive Summary These newcomers are no longer largely of European origin. Instead, they mostly come from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Since the 1970s, immigrants and refugees from these parts of the world have changed and enriched the cityscape with their places of worship, businesses, and cultural events. While acknowledging that immigrants participate in a global movement, the research for this report was locally grounded. The LNHP requested that the study focus on two Lowell neighborhoods, the Lowell Highlands and the Back Central area. While we focus on these two sections of the city, we learned that the lives and movements of immigrants often went well beyond the two neighborhoods. Like much of the academic literature in the social sciences and the humanities, we maintain that concepts such as ethnicity and race are socially constructed. These organizing principles change meaning through time, space, and throughout cultures. Immigrant identities are imagined and constructed by mainstream receiving societies, but also by immigrants themselves. This leads to complex and diverse processes that buck easy characterization and categorization. Thus, immigrant experiences and identities are as diverse and complex as the oral histories we collected and the hundreds of interviews and immigrant stories we studied in the process of writing this report. Such human experiences are at the center of our report. The immigrant/refugee/migrant experience continues to shape Lowell and the nation. Newcomers arrive weekly, adding to the community mosaic. We hope that the study provides a useful perspective on the complex history of the area and that we carefully considered the numerous ways that transnational influences dynamically shape Lowell’s story and, by extension, the nation’s history. ii iii Executive Summary TAB le OF CONT E NT S Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................i List of Illustrations and Photos .................................................................................................vi Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................vii Chapter One: Global Immigration in Lowell: Overview and Assessment ............................1 Part ONE: BEFORE Lowell: A History Of The Greater Lowell Area Prior To The Industrial Revolution ...........7 Chapter Two: Pawtucket and Wamesit: The Challenges of [Reconstructing the History of] Two New England Native Communities .................................................9 Pawtucket and Wamesit: Two Pennacook Communities .........................................12 Pawtucket, Wamesit, and European Colonization ...................................................14 Elliot and Gookin .........................................................................................................17 Missing Elements ..........................................................................................................19 King Philips War and the Ethnic Cleansing of Wamesit and Pawtucket ...............22 Native Americans in the Greater Lowell Area after King Philip’s War ..................23 Chapter Three: East Chelmsford to Lowell: From Colonial Settlement to the Industrial Revolution .........................................................................................25 Community, Religion, and Church .............................................................................27 The Farming Economy .................................................................................................31 Conclusion: Toward Revolution .................................................................................33 Part two: THE MIDDLE PERIOD: Immigration and Industrialization ..............................................................................35 Chapter Four: From Farm to Factory: The Red Brick Mills and the Irish ..........................37 Lowell Takes Shape .......................................................................................................39 The Early Irish ...............................................................................................................42 Religion and Education ................................................................................................44 ‘Famine’ Immigration and Nativist Hostilities ..........................................................46 Social Conditions ..........................................................................................................49 Popery, Know-Nothings, and Challenges to Social Harmony ................................53 Economic Troubles and Patriotism Tested ................................................................59 ii iii Table of Contents Table of Contents Chapter Five: Late Nineteenth Century Immigration Case Studies: French Canadians and Greeks Into the Acre and Beyond ......................................63 French Canadians in Lowell: Arrival ..........................................................................63 Fitting In? .................................................................................................................65 Stay or Go? ...............................................................................................................66 Housing and Community Building.......................................................................67 Employment and the Family Wage .......................................................................69 Religious and Social Life ........................................................................................75 The Greeks in Lowell: The Greeks Arrive .................................................................76 Economy and Employment ...................................................................................79 Social and Religious Life ........................................................................................81 Housing and Neighborhood .................................................................................83 Chapter Six: The Gates are Open for a Time: Jewish, Polish, Lithuanian, and Armenian Immigration ..........................................87 Jewish Stories .................................................................................................................89
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